Nevalya

  On the morning that the Talavar pulls into the Citadel station, Nevalya wakes up in Charlie’s bed. She has awakened here enough times over the preceding months that she no longer has to quell the revolt that used to bubble up in her gut each time.

  She doesn’t hate Charlie as much as she expected to. She may not hate him at all. She’s a little disgusted at how malleable he’s turned out to be, but as long as she doesn’t think too hard about him, his company is pleasant enough. He’s a bit selfish in bed, but that’s immaterial. She’s not there for the fun of it.

  As if responding to the thought, Charlie slides a hand between her legs and without waiting for her to respond, begins to probe with eager fingers.

  She smiles at him and places a hand gently on his chest. She’s very good at smiling at him without meaning it.

  “Not right now,” she says softly. “We’re already running late.”

  His grin is mischievous and his fingers begin to move with more urgency.

  “Let them wait. What are they gonna do, fire me?”

  Her smile remains steady, her legs unparted. When he reaches for her breast with his other hand, she rolls away from him onto her back.

  He groans a little petulantly and withdraws his groping hands at last.

  “Fine.” He sits up and swings his legs over the edge of the bed. “But we’re returning to this conversation this evening.”

  Nevalya rolls her eyes at his back.

  Big surprise there.

  As they dress and prepare to disembark, a little nervous flutter rises in her belly. It has taken months of careful work to cultivate this relationship and here, in the Citadel, is where she’ll find out if it’s enough. She’s closer to her goal than she’s ever been.

  She takes three or four deep breaths, reminding herself there’s still a long way to go.

  “You alright?” When she looks up, Charlie is regarding her with a concerned expression. She smiles.

  “Just got dizzy for a few seconds. I think I’m dehydrated.”

  “Yeah,” Charlie says ruefully. “Me too. Maybe we go for a better whiskey to water ratio next time.”

  “It seemed like the perfect ratio at the time,” Nev shoots him a suggestive wink and returns to buttoning her blouse.

  “It really, really did,” he agrees.

  After a few minutes he clears his throat tentatively.

  “I should have asked you about this sooner,” he says. “But do you think you would want to stay with me while we’re here?”

  He really should have asked her sooner—she’d been starting to worry he wouldn’t ask at all. She pretends to consider the idea for the first time.

  The Citadel is the longest of the Talavar’s stops. There will be tune-ups and repairs to the train, cars swapped out, a thorough cleaning. Charlie will attend Committee meetings and other events. The procurement team will see to restocking the supplies for the next round of deliveries, while the research team offloads thousands of vials of blood.

  All told, they are likely to be here for three or four weeks—long enough that if Charlie decides to take a break from her company during the stop, her plans could go to shit fast.

  “Hm,” she says, slipping into a pair of comfortable walking shoes. “I don’t know. What’s in it for me?”

  Charlie leans over behind her to speak in a low, sultry voice against her neck.

  “I’d have thought you’d know the answer to that by now.”

  Why is it always the mediocre lovers who think they’re doing you a favor by offering to fuck you?

  “Oh is that all?” she shrugs, pretending it’s a joke. “In that case, I’m sure I can find a place in town.”

  She stands and takes a step away from him but he catches her around the waist and pulls her back against him, laughing. He wraps his arms around her, nuzzling his chin into her shoulder.

  “Okay fine, I’ll sweeten the deal. How does really good food, really expensive wine, and absolutely sparkling company sound?”

  “Red wine or white?” she asks after another thoughtful pause.

  “Either or both.”

  “Oh, well you should have led with that. Take me out to see the sights?”

  “Every night. Promise. Except for the night of the Committee gala. I was kind of hoping you’d be my date for that.”

  Nev makes an effort to breathe evenly and keep her heart rate steady. She turns in his arms, planting a quick kiss on his mouth.

  “Oh alright. You’ve convinced me.”

  He grins again and pulls her closer for a deeper, more thorough kiss.

  It’s strange being back in the Citadel. Although, Nev reminds herself, the inside of the Committee Complex hardly counts as being back. She won’t really know how it feels until she can get out into the Citadel proper. That has to wait though, at least a little while.

  There is a visit she’s anxious to make, but if she goes straight there someone will notice. Maybe they will think nothing of it, or they won’t care. Maybe they’ll start to wonder, and poke, and ask questions.

  Nev is not oblivious to the way the passengers’ attitudes have soured toward her since Nokon City. They don’t bother to hide their distaste when they see her, even if they don’t go so far as insulting her to her face. She understands. Nev got their beloved Tali exiled from the train, after all. Tali who has been known by the residents of at least ten cars since she was a child. Tali who counted nearly everyone in the community in some manner a parent.

  She knows they whisper about her. They can’t prove she set Tali up but her encouragement at the scene of the girl’s exile was public enough to spark rumors. And as if that weren’t enough, she then went on to start sleeping with the Conductor—an act so brazenly wanton in their view, there can be no excuse. It’s not as if she’s the first train passenger to find themselves in a Conductor’s cabin. She’s just the first, in their memory at least, who schemed and betrayed fellow passengers to get there. If they see her behaving in any way that might seem suspicious, many of them will be only too eager to exact their vengeance for her crimes against Tali.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Sometimes she wants to take them by the shoulders and shake them. To scream at them that this is so much bigger than one annoying girl who lived to lick the Conductor’s boot. To ask them if they really thought their dear, innocent Tali wasn’t well on her way to the same bed she sleeps in now.

  They probably wouldn’t be bothered by that at all, she thinks. Nevermind that Charlie has been a father figure to Tali since childhood. It’s only weird because Nev pursued Charlie, and not the other way around.

  She contents herself, for now, with keeping her head held high and refusing to be cowed by their dirty looks.

  At least in the Committee Complex she won’t have to worry about that quite as much. Most of the passengers, except those with business to conduct here, will spend the majority of their break enjoying the rest of the Citadel.

  The mage’s quarters are every bit as luxurious as Charlie promised, but Nev is only too happy to get away from them. Since Charlie will be spending the first day in logistics meetings and catching up on Committee business, Nev decides to spend it exploring the complex. She has no expectation of being allowed to leave it if her plans succeed, but it can’t hurt to be familiar with the layout anyway. Maybe she’ll get lucky and find a quick escape route.

  The campus is enormous, and heavily guarded. This is, after all, the center of magical production in Salus. All legal modules and medications are designed and fabricated here. The massive greenhouses in which fruits and vegetables are grown for distribution to the entire Salus area are here. Everything under the Custodian’s considerable jurisdiction is based, if not housed entirely, here.

  She buys a coffee in the lobby and wanders the park-like grounds for a while, watching staff bustle around attending to the various restaurants and shops that serve the Committee exclusively. A tour group of schoolchildren pass her, and she stops to listen to their chatter.

  The tour guide tells them they will visit the library and archives next, so Nev steps onto the sidewalk behind them, following at a leisurely distance. If there’s any place she’s likely to find a map of the complex, that will be it. Of course, the contents of the library are accessible from any slate; the library itself only exists as a sort of stately memorial. A place to visit. But it’s an opportunity to browse titles that might otherwise trigger suspicion and leave a trail if accessed from a slate.

  While many of the committee buildings maintain an austere, business-like appearance, the library is large and ornate. The committee wants anyone who visits to feel the importance of the history it houses.

  Near the front, a display titled “Conservation of Magic” houses a number of historical documents and a visual timeline of the events leading up to and following The Siphoning. Nev flips through the names and photos of the original Committee members, pausing now and then to read the backstory printed on little cards beneath their images.

  Dr. Andronicus Lowery

  Magic Specialty: Biology

  Magic Ability: Known, hereditary

  Dr. Lowery began his career studying biology and its intersection with magic in what was at the time known as Koltar. As a young scientist, his paper titled Umbilical Mysteries: The Biology of Hereditary Magic quickly became the leading resource on understanding how and why magic traits are passed down through generations. Dr. Lowery was among the founding members of the Committee to Conserve magic, and his signature can be found on the document appointing the Custodian.

  Nev shakes her head at the entry.

  He picked that name himself, she thinks. There is no way that man was delivered into his mother’s arms, an innocent infant, and she thought “I will call him Andronicus”.

  A few entries later, she finds the original Conductor

  Professor Alan Carr

  Magic Specialty: Communications

  Magic Ability: Known, Spontaneous

  The search for a train conductor was a difficult one, reads his notecard. The candidate would be the only Committee-member to spend the majority of his time outside the geographical protection of the Committee Complex. After The Siphoning, danger to known mages was considered to be at an all-time high. Professor Carr, however, did not flinch from the task. He bravely set off with the first trainful of supplies across Salus, and never looked back.

  Nev smirks. “Professor Carr took the train,” she mutters aloud. “And I thought Andronicus was unrealistic.”

  She flips through several more entries without stopping before coming to the final page. This is the one she’s looking for—the Custodian, Dr. Erroll K. Henry. Not the first Custodian, the only one. Unlike the other positions on the Committee, the Custodian’s task is considered too vital to pass on. So they just keep him alive.

  She studies his face for a moment, searching for something she can’t pinpoint. Some sign of the man’s humanity, maybe, or lack thereof. Something either to love or hate. She’s disappointed to find nothing remarkable in his face. He looks neither charismatic nor kind. He’s just a thin, pale-skinned man wearing glasses and a respectable tie. He may even have been considered good-looking, if not markedly so.

  Nev skips the man’s bio and returns the stack of pages to its shelf. As she turns away from the display a man in a blue suit catches her eye. He’s walking toward her in such a purposeful way that her heart skips a beat.

  What did she do that was noticeable? Has she lingered too long at the magic display? Shown too much interest in the Committee members?

  The man smiles as he approaches and Nev pastes a carefully curated but brilliant smile onto her own face in return.

  “Miss Ahtwal?” She gives a start at hearing her name on the stranger’s lips, and hopes he doesn’t notice. When he extends his hand, she takes it. “The Conductor told us to expect you. I’m the head librarian, and I just wanted to welcome you to the Complex. If there are any questions I can answer for you, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

  Charlie told them to expect her? She hadn’t told him she was coming here before he left this morning—didn’t even know herself. It’s almost sweet that he knew she’d end up here.

  Or maybe he can read your mind and knows everything. For the millionth time, she pushes the thought away.

  “That’s so kind, thank you,” she says sweetly.

  “Are you looking for anything in particular?” he asks. “We have the premium collection on magic history, as you might imagine.” He winks, letting her in on the joke.

  “I don’t doubt it,” she laughs. “I might take a look at it later. This morning I thought I could kill some time with a novel or something.” She gives him a half-embarrassed smile, as if she’s afraid he’ll think her frivolous. “Point me to the fiction?”

  For a moment, when the librarian accompanies her to the requested area, she worries he intends to stay with her. Instead he leaves her with a polite bow and she allows herself to breathe a little.

  She selects a novel at random. It’s one of the classics of course—modern fiction rarely exists in printed form anymore. To be safe, she stays put for an hour, sitting in a comfortable armchair and pretending to be engrossed. If anyone is watching, they’ll see her put it down with a yawn, stretch, and wander aimlessly off.

  She works her way through various sections at a maddeningly slow pace, stopping now and then to leaf through books and journals, so that it’s afternoon before she finally finds what she’s looking for.

  On the third floor, in a remote area of the stacks that probably isn’t frequented by guests, an unimposing row of books and bundles of documents are stored beneath the label “History of the Citadel”. Here will be the items too mundane or too scandalous to merit a place in the magic display.

  Sitting cross-legged on the floor, Nev flips through them until one of them, bulky and misshapen, opens to reveal a number of maps—bound as pages into the book, but big enough to fold out to twice the book’s width.

  Most of them are useless—maps of city squares and neighborhood planning zones, but among them are two labeled “Custodial Area.” These maps are complete—including the areas not open to civilians and tours, and thus not listed in the public directory.

  Nev studies them for some time, intending to put the book back on the shelf before she leaves. When it comes time to go, however, she hesitates. There are people she’s read about who can take one look at a map or document and memorize it: Nev is not one of them. Would it be too dangerous to bring the book back to her room?

  Of course it would. It’s not her room, it’s Charlie’s room. Besides the library certainly has security measures in place to prevent theft.

  Instead she pulls her slate out of a pocket and begins scanning the relevant pages. This is only moderately less dangerous than taking the book itself but moderately less is still less.

  As she stands to go, another title catches her eye: The Extract Theory, by Dr. Andronicus Lowery. She’s already stayed too long. Any longer and the librarian will begin to wonder what’s become of her. Also, the longer she stays, the more pressing the feeling that she is not supposed to be in this area at all.

  She will have to find an excuse to come back here soon.